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Suarez continues goalscoring form
Liverpool may have brought in reinforcements to ease the apparent burden on striker Luis Suarez but their leading scorer appears not to notice or care as he hit two to help beat Sunderland 3-0 at Anfield.
The Uruguay international took his tally to 15 in 19 Barclays Premier League matches - the last Reds player to reach that total was Fernando Torres in 2009-10, scoring 18 a year after they almost won the title.
Raheem Sterling opened proceedings with a well-taken lob over goalkeeper Simon Mignolet as Liverpool began the new year with a home victory after recording just six in the league in the whole of 2012.
Having new #12million signing from Chelsea Daniel Sturridge watching from the Main Stand was probably the prompt Liverpool's forward line needed to shine.
Stewart Downing, whose future at Anfield is far from certain despite a number of improved performances in recent weeks, forced Mignolet into a full-length save from an 11th-minute free-kick.
It was not the beginning of the type of wasteful deluge which typified Anfield performances in the previous 12 months but it served as a good starting point.
What followed, however, was finishing of the highest order from a player still learning his trade at the highest level and another arguably very close to the summit.
Firstly Suarez hooked a ball forward for Sterling to race onto and, as Mignolet charged out to the edge of his penalty area, the 18-year-old coolly lobbed the goalkeeper.
James McClean should have equalised after Sunderland easily cut through the Liverpool defence but he managed to miss the target with only Jose Reina to beat and it proved costly.
From the hosts' next chance Steven Gerrard's pass released Suarez who was bounced off ball by Carlos Cuellar.
Referee Phil Dowd played a good advantage and the forward continued his run into the box before drilling a shot through the goalkeeper's legs with the outside of his right boot.
Sunderland still had fight left in them, though, and had it not been for a brilliant close-range stop by Reina to deny Matt Kilgallon, the Black Cats would have had a foothold in the game.
But there was no way back seven minutes into the second half as Suarez struck for the second time.
Inexplicably the second successive side to visit Anfield - Fulham were the other - decided the right tactic was to sit off Gerrard and let him have the ball.
He destroyed the Cottagers with his range of passing and the same fate befell Sunderland.
The England captain collected the ball around the right-back position and, with no pressure on him, he had time to pick out Suarez's run 60 yards away.
His team-mate needed no second invitation and in collecting the ball he moved it to his right to unsteady Mignolet and fired home Liverpool's third.
Suarez was denied a hat-trick by the legs of the goalkeeper while substitute Joe Allen's shot was deflected over by Danny Rose.
Victory, which completed a haul of nine points out of a possible 12 over the festive period, lifted Liverpool into eighth place, seven points behind fourth-placed Chelsea.
A second successive defeat for Sunderland, after two wins, means Martin O'Neill's side are looking over the shoulders again, four points above the relegation zone.
Source: DSG
Source: DSG


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Tyler Perry stars as a successful and wealthy businessman who has always done what's expected of him...until he meets a single mother who inspires him to live the life he's always wanted. Starring Tyler Perry, Thandie Newton, Gabrielle Union, Brian White, Rebecca Romijn, Jamie Kennedy, Eddie Cibrian, Jordenn Thompson, with Phylicia Rashad Technical Information
Director: Tyler Perry Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC Language: English Subtitles: English, Spanish Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.) Aspect Ratio: Widescreen Number of discs: 1 Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Studio: Lions Gate DVD Release Date: June 12, 2012 Run Time: 91 minutes
- "Two Worlds Collide" Featurette - "Motherly Love" Featurette

subset: commoncrawl


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Water SA
On-line version ISSN 1816-7950
Print version ISSN 0378-4738
Water SA vol.35 n.2 Pretoria Jan. 2009
Laboratory protocols for testing the efficacy of commercial pit latrine additives
KM Foxon*; S Mkhize; M Reddy; CA Buckley
Pollution Research Group, School of Chemical Engineering, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041, South Africa
There is considerable national interest in the use of commercial microbially derived products for controlling the rate of accumulation of the contents of pit latrines. Manufacturers claim that some of these products can reduce accumulation rates, prevent the pit from ever filling up, or even result in decreases in pit contents volume. Prior to this research, there have been no scientific publications that have conclusively supported or refuted these claims.
This project undertook to perform reproducible laboratory tests that would quantify the effect of commercial pit latrine additive products. Protocols were developed and tested on a range of different commercial products sold for their ability to control the rate of accumulation of pit latrine contents. The effect of commercial additives on mass loss from VIP sludge in 300 g honey jars was compared to mass loss from similar units subjected to no treatment and treatment with water.
The purpose of these experiments was to separate and quantify the effect of micro-organisms or enzymes originating from commercial pit latrine additives from the effect of natural processes within the pit latrine sludge (including digestion by micro-organisms in the VIP sludge and dehydration) and the effects of other actions associated with treatment, such as the addition of water.
Results indicated that insignificant mass loss occurred in all anaerobic test units, while significant mass loss occurred in all other test units. However, there was no statistically significant difference between any of the different treatments in the aerobic units. Investigation of analytical data from the test units indicated that mass loss in aerobic units was due to a combination of dehydration through evaporation of moisture and biological stabilisation processes, and that the latter were not significantly enhanced by the addition of commercial pit latrine products. It was concluded that there was no evidence to support claims that pit latrine additives could extend the life of a pit latrine.
Keywords: additives, pit latrines, VIP
A well-designed and operated VIP has reduced fly and odour problems and therefore improved health benefits compared to rudimentary pits (Franceys et al., 1992; Cotton et al., 1995; Bester and Austin, 2000) but poor degradation in most pits results in a build-up of noxious and potentially hazardous material that must ultimately be removed at significant cost to either the householder or local authority or both (Still, 2002).
In a rural setting pits are generally allowed to fill to within a certain proximity to the top of the pit (e.g. 300 mm) and then covered over, a new pit is dug nearby, and the superstructure moved or rebuilt. A period of stabilisation may be allowed before pit contents are removed and the pit reused. In a peri-urban densely populated setting, full pits are either emptied by pumping out the contents (or in the case of solid contents, digging out) since alternative sanitation facilities or sites for a new pit are not usually available (Cotton et al., 1995; Still, 2002). Clearly, extending the life of the pit by reducing the rate of accumulation of material in the pit could result in substantial savings in pit maintenance.
There are a number of proprietary products available that are marketed for their ability to reduce pit contents, odour or fly problems. Independent scientific evidence of their efficacy is scarce, although there is a vast body of anecdotal evidence that suggests that they have the ability to significantly reduce pit contents, fly and odour problems. Equally, a number of informal studies have suggested that there is no significant benefit to the use of these additives over the addition of water or some essentially inert additive (in effect, a placebo). In many instances, municipalities and other service providers are hesitant to sanction the use of pit latrine additives as they have no scientific basis for choosing one product over another, and are concerned that trials with these products may lead to an expectation among communities that the products will be used forthwith. This in turn could lead to a situation where political pressure results in the application of expensive products that may or may not have any significant benefit. It is generally felt that a scientific explanation of the mechanism of pit latrine additives, and proof of their efficacy would provide the authorities with the ability to rationally assess the cost-effectiveness of implementing programmes for treating pits with additives.
A preliminary trial into the effect of pit latrine additives was conducted in the field as part of a wider study into processes in pit latrines (Buckley et al., 2008). Testing of pit latrine additives in the field was found to produce inconclusive results due to the difficulty of obtaining representative measurements of any condition or property within the pit and the lack of control of the test site. It was apparent that many of the observations drawn from field studies relate to the condition and ownership of the pit rather than the biological processes (or lack thereof) occurring within the pit (Buckley et al., 2008). The field study concluded that it is necessary to have an independently managed, well-controlled testing protocol through which an assessment of the effect of the additive on the pit latrine contents can be made. This paper presents the results of a laboratory study into the effects of commercial pit-latrine products on pit-latrine contents.
Published studies on the use of pit-latrine additives
A WRC project (Taljaard et al., 2003) evaluated the ability of microbial or microbially-derived products to treat pit-latrine contents. This study had two experimental parts: firstly, samples of faeces were incubated under aerobic conditions at 22ºC. A volume ratio of approximately 2:5 faeces to pit-latrine additive solution was used. This is several orders of magnitude greater than the volume ratios that would be used in the field. Twelve different pit-latrine additives were tested. The faeces were combined with sterilised water to make a paste and added in a thin layer on the bottom of each respirometer flask. To the paste was added the calculated dosage of bio-supplement and a small amount of a nutrient solution. Samples were agitated through-out the 5 d experiment. The conditions created in the respirometer were therefore ideal for micro-biological degradation of the faecal material: a high ratio of micro-organism originating from the bio-supplement to food was supplied; no inhibiting effects that might be caused by presence of urine in a pit were experienced, an unlimited oxygen supply with little mass transfer resistance was provided and agitation ensured that good contact between bio-supplement and faeces was obtained. Under these conditions, COD and total suspended solids (TSS) removal (calculated from average sample concentrations measured before and after incubation) in control vessels was found to be higher in units treated with pit-latrine additive than in control units. Rigorous statistical analysis of the data was not presented. Products that caused improved COD reduction appeared to usually result in improved TSS reduction. These results indicate that certain of the products at the dosages applied may have been able to significantly increase COD and TSS removal rates over those which occur naturally. However the dosages used in these experiments were far above those that could be used in practice.
Two of the products that had been shown to be effective in removing COD and TSS were used to treat two blocks of pit latrines on a farm. Pits were watered on a daily basis to simulate urine addition. A third block was treated with the same amount of water as the other two blocks, but no bio-supplement was added. Researchers tried to prevent the labourers from using any of these pits during the course of the study. The pits were open (did not have pedestals or squat hole covers) and did not have vent pipes. Some reduction in pit contents was seen in the two blocks where the toilets were treated with pit-latrine additives, and none was recorded for the control blocks; however, the volume reduction was very little (a maximum of 22 cm over a period of 3 months when no additional solid material was being added). The authors of this study suggested that pit-latrine additives are able to reduce pit contents (Taljaard et al., 2003).
In a second pit-latrine additive study, a pit-latrine additive consisting of spore-forming non-pathogenic bacteria was dosed to 4 pit latrines weekly for four weeks (Jere et al., 1998). This study concluded that the treatment reduced the height of pit contents. However, there was no control against which the results could be compared. The authors cautiously concluded that the additives showed promise for reducing filling rates. However, the results did not indicate the contribution to the decrease in pit contents height of the method of application (injection under pressure through a perforated tube into the pit contents).
In summary, although some work has been undertaken to test the efficacy of commercial pit-latrine additives on controlling filling rates, the work reported does not provide sufficient evidence to prove that additives containing micro-organisms significantly increase the rate of degradation of pit-latrine contents; however, micro-organisms from pit-latrine additives are clearly able to digest pit-latrine contents.
Development of a laboratory protocol for testing pit-latrine additives
The hypotheses to be tested by the laboratory protocol were:
That through the biological action of micro-organisms present in pit-latrine additives, the overall mass of a sample of pit-latrine contents could be reduced at a faster rate than could be achieved by natural degradative processes mediated by micro-organisms present in the pit-latrine contents; or
That the addition of pit-latrine additives had no significant effect on the rate of mass loss or the rate of change of composition of samples of pit-latrine contents as determined by total COD, soluble COD, moisture and solids content measurements.
Materials and methods
The laboratory protocol consisted of a test in which a sample of VIP contents, sampled from the surface of the pit beneath the pit pedestal, was mixed and divided into sub-samples of known mass (approximately 300 g each) that were placed in 300 mℓ screw-top honey jars. A number of treatments were applied to these units. The following terminology has been defined:
A unit was a single honey jar containing approximately 300 g of VIP contents
A treatment was a set of 3 or 5 units within a trial that have all been set up in the same way (i.e. all units that have been treated with a fixed dose of Additive A.)
A trial consisted of treatments (including reference and control treatments) that have been set up from a single well-mixed sample of VIP contents.
Aerobic units were open with no hindrance to the movement of air between bulk air supply and the top of the VIP contents in the units
Anaerobic units were closed, limiting access of air to the VIP contents in each unit.
The dosing rate of additives was determined as mass (or volume) additive per surface area of the pit [g/m2] and the same dosing rate was applied to the honey jars. Tests were performed in three or five replicates. Two reference treatments (or controls) were included for comparative purposes, namely no addition of water or chemicals (control); or addition of water (water reference).
The mass of the honey jars was measured when empty, immediately after filling and at intervals of approximately 3 d for between 27 and 46 d after commencement of the experiment.
COD concentration [g COD/g sample], moisture content [g H2O/g sample] and total solids content [g TS/g sample] were determined on each test unit at the beginning and end of the experiment.
From these data, the following values were calculated:
Rate of mass loss in each unit
Extent of COD reduction in each unit
Extent of moisture loss in each unit.
Mass loss rates, COD concentration and moisture content were compared between treatments with additives and similar measures obtained for control units and water reference units.
Two trials were undertaken in this study. In the 1st trial, the effect of aerobic and anaerobic conditions was tested. In the 2nd trial, the relative humidity of the air supply for aerobic tests was increased to reduce evaporation.
Trial 1
In Trial 1, the protocols were tested under both aerobic and anaerobic conditions. The difference in conditions was achieved by setting up 2 sets of test units, where screw top lids were tightly fitted to the honey jars of the anaerobic set and the aerobic set were left open. All treatments were incubated for 46 d in a fume cupboard.
Under anaerobic conditions, only a very small fraction of mass was lost from any of the test units. No water reference units were constructed for the anaerobic set. Figure 1 shows the average rate of mass loss from each of the units in the anaerobic set of Trial 1. These values were calculated using standard linear regression techniques.
Figure 1 shows a large distribution of mass loss rates across all the units. No significant change in height was observed for samples incubated under anaerobic conditions. The overall rate of mass loss from anaerobic units in Trial 1 was 0.036 kg/ m2 surface area/d. No clear trend could be identified in examination of the mass loss rates. The overall variation in mass loss rate between treatments was similar, with only Product E showing a mass loss rate that was systematically higher for all 5 treatments. It was noted that although the relative variation between rates calculated in the anaerobic test appeared to be large, the absolute variation in rates was actually larger in the aerobic tests (data presented in detail below).
These results imply that for all of the treatments considered under anaerobic conditions, the amount of biological activity is insignificant (all treatments lost less than 3 % of their original mass under the conditions tested).
In contrast to the results obtained under anaerobic conditions, when the test units were left open to the air (i.e. without lids), higher mass loss rates were recorded. The average rate of mass loss across all aerobic units in Trial 1 was 0.80 kg/ m2 surface area/d (Fig. 2).
The average rate of mass loss in aerobic units was more than 22 times greater than the equivalent rate of mass loss in anaerobic units. This result clearly indicates that the processes that facilitate mass reduction in pit-latrine samples require exposure to air. These include dehydration and biological conversion of organic material to gases.
Figure 2 shows that there was very little difference between any of the treatments. Once again a distribution of mass loss rates was observed between units within a treatment. None of the treatments showed a systematic improvement in mass loss rate across all units within the treatment compared to either the control or the water reference units. These relationships are shown in greater detail in Fig. 3, which shows data for each additive treatment and water reference units compared to equivalent data from the control treatment. Each data set was fitted with a straight line by linear regression. For this trial, it was observed that the regressed line for the controls fell above the regressed line for each of the other treatments, i.e. the amount of mass loss appeared to be consistently greater in control units than in units treated with commercial additives. However, it was found that the difference was not statistically significant for any of the combinations shown. Thus it was concluded that for Trial 1, proprietary additives A to G did not have a significant effect (either positive or negative) on the rate of natural mass loss processes that occurred within samples of pit-latrine contents.
Measurements of moisture and COD concentration were made in the bulk sample before the start of the trial, and on samples taken from the surface of 3 of 5 replicates from each aerobic treatment at the end of the trial. Results of these analyses are presented in Table 1.
The initial moisture content was found to be 0.83 g H2O/g wet sample. This value is extremely high, higher than any other moisture content measured in pit-latrine contents in the course of the larger project of which this study was a part (Buckley et al., 2008), and similar to maximum values recorded in faeces. As a result the COD content reported on a dry basis was also very high (1 100 mg COD/g sample). Insufficient replicates were performed to gain an indication of the variance of these values.
Statistical analysis of the data showed that there was no significant difference between final moisture and COD concentration from any of the treatments and the control. These results indicate that although both moisture and COD content decreased, the amount of moisture loss and COD reduction was independent of the treatment. The lack of replication in the initial moisture content and COD concentration data means that it is not possible to make any conclusions about the magnitude of moisture and COD reduction with any certainty. Furthermore, since only surface samples were analysed (and the surface is expected to have undergone a greater degree of dehydration and biological degradation than the buried bulk), it was also not possible to perform a mass balance to determine how much of the overall mass loss could be attributed to moisture loss.
Moisture loss through dehydration may have had a significant effect on the interpretation of the results of Trial 1 under aerobic conditions. Thus it was proposed that the test protocol should be modified to supply test units with air saturated with moisture in an attempt to reduce the overall rate of dehydration. By reducing the mass loss due to dehydration, the contribution of biological degradation to mass loss could be more clearly identified.
Trial 2
Trial 2 followed the same basic protocol as Trial 1 using fresh additives that had been recently acquired from a number of suppliers, including some of the same brands tested in Trial 1, and a number of new brands. Three of the additive brands tested in Trial 1 were used again in Trial 2 while the remaining 4 had not been previously tested. To reduce the rate of dehydration from test units, the humidity in the fume cupboard was increased.
Only aerobic units were set up since it had been shown that overall rates of mass loss were insignificant under anaerobic conditions. Only 3 replicates were used for each treatment, and the trial was terminated after 27 d.
Figure 4 presents the rate of mass loss from each of the units in Trial 2. It was observed that the variance in rate of mass loss was higher for Trial 2 than Trial 1; the overall variance of slopes in the aerobic set of Trial 1 was 3.1×10-3 kg/m2·d, while that for Trial 2 was 2.7×10 -2 kg/m2·d. There were two mathematical reasons for this difference; firstly, only 3 replicates were used in Trial 2, while 5 were used in Trial 1, and the length of the experiment in Trial 2 was shorter than in Trial 1, resulting in fewer data points (10 vs. 15 for each unit). However, examination of Fig. 2 and Fig. 4 suggests that the variation in mass loss rate due to dehydration or biological activity may also have been greater in Trial 2 compared to Trial 1.
The overall rate of mass loss from all units in Trial 2 was 0.90 kg/ m2 surface area/day. Comparison of the mass loss rates from the control sets of Trial 1 and 2 indicated that although the data from Trial 2 appeared to indicate that the mass loss occurred at a higher rate in Trial 2 than in Trial 1, the difference was not statistically significant (Welch test, P=0.48). Similarly, by considering the entire set of regressed mass loss rates across all aerobic units in Trial 1 and Trial 2 despite an apparent increase in mass loss rate, the difference was not statistically significant (Welch test, P=0.47). Thus it may be concluded that for these two trials, the source of pit-latrine contents did not have a significant effect on the results. However, this conclusion may have been different if the average mass loss rate for each unit in Trial 2 could have been determined with greater certainty (i.e. with a smaller confidence interval on the reported value). This conclusion also does not take into account differences in prevailing conditions of the test, specifically the increased relative humidity in the fume cupboard in Trial 2.
Figure 5 (next page) presents cumulative mass loss data from treatments with commercial pit-latrine additives and the water references compared to the control units for Trial 2. In all cases, the average regression line for the treatment is similar to that of the control. However, unlike the observation in Trial 1, the regression lines of certain of the treatments (B, H and I) were above those of the control. To test whether the apparent differences were statistically significant or not, the regression slope data (including the calculated variances of the regression slopes) were subjected to a Welch test to determine the probability that the mean slopes of the treatment and control slopes were significantly different. In all comparisons, the Welch test returned P>0.45; i.e. the probability that the slopes were not significantly different was greater than 45% and therefore none of the treatments resulted in significantly greater mass loss rates than observed in the control (A difference is only considered to be statistically significant if the probability that the two values are the same is less than 5%).
These results confirm the findings of Trial 1 that treatment of pit-latrine contents with commercial additives under the conditions used in the laboratory protocols resulted in no significant difference to the rate of mass loss from the samples.
A further interesting result was that the rate of mass loss from Trial 2 was similar to that of Trial 1 despite the fact that the rate of dehydration was less as a result of the air supply being saturated with water. Examination of moisture data (Table 2) showed that the final moisture content in the units at the end of Trial 2 was significantly higher than those recorded in Trial 1, and in fact similar to the initial value. Thus it appears that supplying saturated air to the units resulted in a reduction in the rate of dehydration, and it must therefore be concluded that a significant fraction of the overall mass loss in the units in Trial 2 was due to biological conversion of organic material to carbon dioxide. Furthermore, in Trial 1, it would appear that some of the mass loss observed was due to dehydration. It follows that the rate of biological activity in Trial 2 must have been higher than in Trial 1 if the overall mass loss rates were similar.
Table 2 presents the initial and final moisture content and COD concentrations measured from the surface of units in Trial 2. Once again, lack of replication of the initial values limits the certainty of the calculated amount of moisture and COD loss. As observed in trial 1, there was no significant difference between the final moisture content and COD concentration measured in any of the treatments and the control. This may be due to the insensitivity of the tests for complex heterogeneous material, but certainly does not support any hypothesis that treatment of pit-latrine contents with commercial pit-latrine additives has any measurable effect on the biological activity in the pit-latrine material.
Two trials were performed to test the hypothesis that the use of commercial pit-latrine additives could accelerate the rate of mass loss in pit-latrine samples, or the rate of biological activity in pit-latrine samples. It was shown that the data obtained in these trials did not support either of these hypotheses. It was observed that the rate of mass loss and biological activity in pit-latrine samples were significant under aerobic conditions without the assistance of commercial additives, while no statistically verifiable effect of treatment with a range of these additives could be observed on mass loss and biological activity rates.
These findings are to a certain extent in contradiction of findings of other studies into pit-latrine additives (Jere et al., 1998; Taljaard et al., 2003). However, unlike (Taljaard et al., 2003), this study was designed to test the commercial additives at the dosage rate [g/m2 surface area] at which they would normally be applied, and unlike Jere et al. (1998) using the same application technique as would normally be applied.
Effect of sample heterogeneity
Although pit-latrine content samples should be well mixed before being used in pit-latrine additive trials, a random distribution in biodegradation and mass loss rates in sub-samples was expected due to the slightly different nature of the material in each sub-sample. Consequently, differences in mass loss rate were expected between individual test units. Individual units exhibiting high mass loss rates therefore do not indicate that the treatment applied for that particular unit was responsible for increasing mass loss rate; the conclusion that a treatment has a significant effect on degradation or mass loss rates observed in control or reference treatments had necessarily to be made on the basis of a systematic change observed in a number of replicates of the same treatment.
Micro-organism load in commercial additives vs. pit contents
In order to explain the results obtained in this study, it was hypothesised that commercial pit-latrine additives consisting of preserved micro-organisms capable of degrading organic material are able to digest organic material found in pit-latrine contents, but that the number of active micro-organisms dosed to the pit in an application of a commercial pit-latrine additive is orders of magnitude less than the number already present in the pit-latrine contents. This is in line with the findings of Buckley et al. (2008) that significant degradation occurs in the top (aerobic) layer of the pit latrine due to the activity of micro-organisms that originate from faeces, the soil and any additional organic material that may be added to the pit latrine.
To test this hypothesis, samples of pit-latrine additive and pit-latrine contents were cultured on a nutrient agar medium. As this was only a rough initial test, results obtained are not statistically verifiable. However, observations indicated that the plate-able micro-organism concentration per gram of pit-latrine contents was of a similar order of magnitude to the concentration per gram of commercial pit-latrine additives. If these results are correct, they imply that, in order to achieve a 50 % increase in the rate of degradation in the surface of the pit-latrine contents, a mass of commercial pit-latrine additive of 50 % of the mass of VIP solids in the pit surface layer must be added. For a pit with a surface area of approximately 1.4 m2 and assuming the surface layer can be taken to be between 20 and 50 mm deep, the volume of pit-latrine contents in the surface layer can be calculated to be between 28 and 70 ℓ, i.e. probably between 30 and 80 kg. Thus between 15 and 40 kg of additive (on a dry basis in their present formulation) would have to be supplied to the pit on a regular basis to ensure that the degradation rate remained 50 % higher than that which would occur anyway. The cost of this treatment, and the additional volume that it would add to the pit contents would seem to prohibit this approach.
Fate of additives beneath the surface layer
Buckley et al. (2008) proposed that the mechanism of degradation that occurs in a pit is a natural one in which a significant portion of biodegradable material is aerobically degraded by micro-organisms already present in faeces and soil while it resides on the surface of the pit. When the material in question is covered over, the rate of degradation drops due to a reduction in the availability of oxygen to micro-organisms. Thereafter, a slow process of anaerobic digestion results in further degradation of remaining biodegradable material. After a certain residence time in the pit, it is hypothesised that virtually all biodegradable material will have been converted to biogas or non-degradable solids, and what remains in the lower levels of the pit contents is biologically inert solids.
The fate of micro-organisms added as part of a commercial pit additive formulation would be similar to that of a naturally occurring micro-organism in that, once they were covered over, limitation of oxygen supply would result in the activity of the micro-organisms dropping dramatically.
Preliminary results from a Water Research Commission project that is in progress at the time of writing this paper (WRC Project No. K5/1745 "After the pit is full then what? Strategies to manage on-site dry sanitation systems into the future") indicate that there is very little biodegradable material left in the lower layers of material accumulated in a pit latrine at the time of pit exhumation. These results imply that commercial pit-latrine additives that consist of micro-organisms can have very little effect on this material, and thus call into question the claims that pit-latrine additives can result in the complete reduction of pit-latrine contents with consistent use.
Two trials of the laboratory-scale pit-latrine additive testing protocols were undertaken using commercial pit-latrine additives. The following general conclusions were drawn from the results of these trials:
(Untreated) pit-latrine contents are extremely heterogeneous, varying in composition, biodegradability and biological activity, both within samples from a single pit, between different layers within the same pit, and between different pits. Therefore, there is a distribution of rates of biological activity and dehydration, which may be expected to be found in any trial, whether on a laboratory or a field trial scale. Thus, a treatment may only be considered to have had an affect on these rates if it can be shown that there is a systematic and statistically significant change in the rate of mass loss or rate of biological activity in the pit-latrine contents as a result of the treatment. This study found that:
Treatment of pit-latrine contents with commercial pit-latrine additive products had no statistically significant effect on the rate of mass loss of pit-latrine contents under aerobic or anaerobic conditions
There was no discernable difference in the final moisture content and final COD concentration in the surface of test units between treatments and controls in either of the trials, although there was a difference between the two trials. The difference was largely ascribed to the reduced dehydration rate in Trial 2 as a result of increased relative humidity in the fume hood. Thus there is no evidence that the rate of COD or moisture removal was accelerated by treatment with commercial pit-latrine additives.
Although overall mass loss rates were similar between the two trials, the rate of moisture loss in Trial 2 was lower than in Trial 1 due to increased relative humidity in the fume cupboard. This implies that the rate of mass loss through aerobic biological activity was higher in Trial 2 than in Trial 1. This may be attributed to the differences in composition of the pit-latrine contents used in the two trials, but may also have been affected by the fact that samples did not dehydrate to the same extent in Trial 2 as they did in Trial 1.
Based on these results, it was concluded that treatment with commercial pit-latrine additives was not able to accelerate the rate of biodegradation or mass loss within pit-latrine contents.
This research was funded by the Water Research Commission. The research was made possible with the assistance of eThekwini Water and Sanitation Services, UWP engineers and Fukamela Contractors. The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the participation of CF Nwaneri, BF Bakare, E Balboni and D Magagna.
BESTER JW and AUSTIN LM (2000) Design, Construction, Operation and Maintenance of Ventilated Improved Pit Toilets in South Africa. WRC Report No. 709/1/00 ISBN 1 86845 647 1. Water Research Commission, Pretoria, South Africa. [ Links ]
BUCKLEY CA, FOXON KM, BROUCKAERT CJ, RODDA N, NWANERI C, BALBONI E, COUDERC A and MAGAGNA D (2008) Scientific Support for the Design and Operation of Ventilated Improved Pit Latrines (VIPS) and The Efficacy of Pit Latrine Additives. WRC Report No. TT 357/08, ISBN 978-1-77005-718-0. Water Research Commission, Pretoria, South Africa. [ Links ]
COTTON A, FRANCEYS R, PICKFORD J and SAYWELL D (1995) On-Plot Sanitation in Low-Income Urban Communities: A Review Of Literature. WEDC, Loughborough University of Technology, ISBN 0 906055 44 X. Water Engineering and Development Centre, Leicestershire UK. [ Links ]
FRANCEYS R, PICKFORD J and REED R (1992) A Guide to the Development of On-Site Sanitation. WHO, Geneva. http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/hygiene/envsan/onsitesan.pdf (Accessed 5 June 2007) [ Links ]
JERE M, CHIDAVAENZI M, NHANDARA C and BRADLEY M (1998) The effect of non-pathogenic bacteria on latrine sludge. Proc.24th WEDC Conf.: Sanitation and Water for All. 31 August - 24 September, Islamabad, Pakistan. [ Links ]
STILL DA (2002) After the pit latrine is full....What then? Effective options for pit latrine management. Proc. WISA Bienn. Conf. 19-23 May 2002, Durban, South Africa. [ Links ]
TALJAARD L, VENTER A and GORTON D (2003) Evaluation of Different Commercial Microbial or Microbially-Derived Products for the Treatment of Organic Waste in Pit Latrines. WRC Report No. 1377/1/05. Water Research Commission, Pretoria, South Africa. [ Links ]
This paper was originally presented at the 2008 Water Institute of Southern Africa (WISA) Biennial Conference, Sun City, South Africa, 18-22 May 2008.
* To whom all correspondence should be addressed.
+2731 2601490; fax: +2731 2601118;
e-mail: email@example.com


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Antibiotics May Have Been Wrongly Prescribed for Influenza, CDC Finds
During the 2013 flu season, more people needed antiviral medications than got them, and antibiotics were inappropriately given to a large proportion of patients with influenza (a viral disease that is not helped by taking antibiotics), according to a new study.
The researchers found that nearly 30 percent of the flu patients who were treated during the 2012-2013 influenza season may have been prescribed unnecessary antibiotics instead of antiviral therapy.
The new study is based on medical information from nearly 6,800 patients in five U.S. states. The researchers looked at whether the patients who were at high risk of developing serious complications from the flu received antiviral medications as recommended. [6 Flu Vaccine Myths]
The results showed that antiviral and antibiotic medications were prescribed inappropriately. Less than 20 percent of patients with flu symptoms who could have had benefited from antiviral medication because they were at high risk of developing complications actually received the medication. Among patients who were confirmed to have had influenza through laboratory tests, 16 percent were prescribed antivirals.
In contrast, antibiotics were prescribed more frequently, with 30 percent of lab-confirmed influenza patients receiving one of the three antibiotics the researchers looked for, according to the study published today (July 17) in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
The findings suggest that during 2012–2013 flu season, clinicians prescribed antiviral medications to a relatively small percentage of patients in the clinic, for whom the medications were recommended, and missed potential opportunities to prevent more serious complications in these patients, the researchers said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends using antiviral medication to treat flu patients who are at higher risk for developing serious complications, for example, all hospitalized patients who are suspected to have influenza, young children, people ages 65 years and older, pregnant women, and people with certain medical conditions, such as asthma and heart disease. Early treatment with antivirals reduces the patient's risk of developing complications.
Seasonal influenza results in thousands of hospitalizations in the United States each year and can cause even more serious outcomes. In the 2012-2013 flu season, 64 children died from the flu between September 2012 and February 2013. The CDC recommends yearly vaccination as the best defense against seasonal influenza.
In the new study, Dr. Fiona Havers and a team from the CDC and several other institutions examined prescription records, looking for two influenza antiviral drugs (oseltamivir and zanamivir) and three common antibiotics (amoxicillin-clavulanate, amoxicillin and azithromycin).
Of the 6,766 patients in the study, 1,825 patients were tested and confirmed to have influenza, and also had available medical records stating whether they had received an antibiotics prescription. Thirty percent, or 540 of these patients, had received an antibiotic, the researchers found.
About 1,020 of the patients with flu symptoms were considered at high risk for influenza complications. Less than 200 of these patients (19 percent) received antivirals.
When the researchers focused on the patients who were confirmed to have influenza and were at high risk of complications, they found that only 28 percent of them received an antiviral medication prescription and 24 percent received an antibiotic.
Antibiotics cannot treat influenza, which is caused by a virus. While some of the antibiotics may have been appropriate because patients may have also had bacterial infections in addition to influenza, it is likely most were unnecessary, and potentially contributed to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance, the researchers said.
The findings highlight the need to educate clinicians about the appropriate use of antivirals and antibiotics in patients who have symptoms of influenza, the researchers said.
"Continuing education on appropriate antibiotic and antiviral use is essential to improve health care quality," the researchers wrote in their study.
Email Bahar Gholipour. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.
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By Ben Turner


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GPS Makes Guys Terrible Navigators
The reliance on GPS is destroying our brains. Some of us have become incapable of driving anywhere without the aid of technology and sometimes this means we're driving five miles out of our way just because a handy gadget told us to. Are we trusting GPS too much?


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Olympic Day
USA BMX has joined forces with the United State Olympic Committee and USA Cycling to offer free day of BMX racing at participating BMX tracks around the United States in celebration of Olympic Day.
Olympic Day is a worldwide commemoration of Baron Pierre de Coubertin's June 23, 1894, convening of the first International Olympic Committee (IOC) meeting at the Sorbonne in Paris, and the founding of the Modern Olympic Games. National Olympic Committees (NOCs) throughout the world will also participate in the international celebration, with each Olympic Committee sending Olympic Day greetings to participating nations.
The goal of Olympic Day is to promote the Olympic values and participation in sport across the globe regardless of age, gender or athletic ability.


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The mission of Hospital Sisters Health System (HSHS) is "To reveal and embody Christ's healing love for all people through our high quality Franciscan health care ministry". In this tradition, HSHS is privileged that patients and their families, trust us with their care. We deliver on that trust by placing our patients at the center of what we do, consistently providing safe care of the highest quality. We are committed to the people in the communities we serve.
For 140 years, HSHS hospitals and affiliated physicians have embraced innovation. We adopt best practices, share our successes, and put into practice those processes and procedures that are proven to be reliable and predictable. We strive to be top ranked performers in quality and safety.
With information, people can make better choices about where to receive care. The following quality and performance resources are available:
At HSHS, we remain focused on constantly raising our standards to improve the health of the people we serve.


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Danone and Yakult to accelerate R&D cooperation
alliance involving closer cooperation on R&D and entry into new
markets, maintaining their positions as leaders in the probiotics
The strengthening of the alliance will see two more Danone executives sitting on the Yakult board, bringing the Danone presence up to four. But Danone will not be increasing its shareholding in Yakult, the two companies confirmed. Danone is already the largest shareholder in Yakult with a 20 per cent stake. Danone's first 5 per cent stake in Yakult, bought in 2000, did little to improve cooperation in the probiotics sector. When Danone upped its stake in Yakult to 20 per cent in April 2003, buying €300 million in shares on the open market, the Japanese firm faced speculation that its shareholder would attempt a hostile takeover bid. Both companies have now announced that Danone will maintain its stake at 20.02 per cent until 2012. "The steady strengthening of this cooperation backed by a permanent liaison bureau had made for a climate of trust that Groupe Danone and Yakult Honsha now wish to reinforce through even closer ties at the highest level of their organisations," stated Danone. The partnership will include the establishment of joint ventures in Vietnam and India, and the founding of a Global Probiotic Council. "Building on these new bases, the partners will be accelerating the pace of co-operation, particularly in research," stated Danone. "In this spirit, Yakult Honsha has just granted Groupe Danone's Daniel Carasso Research Center a license for its YIF-Scan, a unique, high precision system that quantifies bacteria, targeting gene sequences (RNA and DNA) specific to particular intestinal bacteria." Sales in probiotics are growing rapidly, as consumers become increasingly aware of the importance of gut health. In Europe, dairy is the biggest area for human food applications. Probiotics are set to reach $137.9 million (€118.5m) in 2010 in Europe, with the US market projected to reach $394 million, according to Frost & Sullivan.


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This article is more than 1 year old
Overland hurls PwC auditors overboard
They said howwid things about our viability
Overland Storage management seems to have taken exception to PricewaterhouseCoopers' auditing of its accounts and fired the firm.
For the past two financial years PwC has added a stern warning to the accounts, saying that there was substantial doubt about Overland's ability to continue as a going concern. While even accountants are entitled to a view about the state of the struggling business, Overland was upset because PwC didn't actually identify any specific factor in the accounts that led them to that conclusion.
Presumably PwC was expressing a view based on such business events as Overland avoiding running out of cash by factoring arrangements, repeated staff headcount reductions, Nasdaq delisting, declining revenues and losses. Overland's thinking is that, if so, it shouldn't have.
The upset was detailed in an 8-K SEC filing that said PwC had been dismissed on October 12. Overland stated that, during the period of the two financial years:
There were no disagreements between our company and PwC on any matter of accounting principles or practices, financial statement disclosure or auditing scope or procedure which, if not resolved to PwC's satisfaction, would have caused PwC to make reference to the subject matter of the disagreement in connection with its report for such years; and there were no reportable events as defined in Item 304(a)(1)(v) of Regulation S-K.
The subject matter of the disagreement was about Overland's ability to continue as a going concern. Overland now thinks PwC shouldn't have expressed such doubts without backing them up. It sent PwC a letter saying this and asking it to send a letter to the SEC saying whether or not it agreed with Overland's point.
Connoisseurs of brevity will appreciate PwC's SEC letter:
We have read the statements made by Overland Storage, Inc. (copy attached), which we understand will be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, pursuant to Item 4.01 of Form 8-K, as part of the Company's Form 8-K report dated October 12, 2009. We agree with the statements concerning our Firm in such Form 8-K.
Moss Adams is replacing PwC, and might be wise to watch what it says. ®


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This blessed Fool-for-Christ lived in the 18th c. At the age of 26 she was widowed when her husband Andrew, an army officer, died unexpectedly at a drinking party without the sacraments and blessings of the Church. She was so shaken by this that she disappeared from Saint Petersburg for five years, and it is believed that she spent this time with some ascetic nuns. When she returned, she gave away all of her goods, even her house, though relatives tried to get her declared insane. When she spoke to the judge privately she was allowed to do as she wished.
She put on her husband's old army jacket and demanded that others call her by his name, saying that she was dead in his place. St Xenia lived homeless, walking the streets of the city in unceasing prayer. She acted foolish to avoid attention to the many prophetic sayings that she gave to help people, and the many good deeds and miracles that she worked through Christ. She helped build the church in the Smolensk Cemetery by carrying bricks up the scaffold unseen at night. She is known for helping others build churches, find housing and jobs, and raise children righteously.
Weight | N/A |
Dimensions | N/A |
Church Feast Day 1 | 24-Jan |
Church Feast Day 2 | 24-May |
Church Feast Day 3 | 11-Sep |
Heritage | Russian |
Style | Egg Tempera |
Date | 20th c. |
Location | Smolensk Cemetery, St. Petersburg |


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Related links:
Animation of Huygens release from Cassini (1.7 MB QuickTime, courtesy NASA)
Animation of Huygens descent through Titan's atmosphere (3.9 MB QuickTime, courtesy NASA)
Animation of Huygens landing on Titan (1.5 MB QuickTime, courtesy NASA)
NASA Cassini/Huygens mission page
ESA Cassini/Huygens mission page
Huygens Probe to Titan
The Huygens space probe landed on Saturn's moon Titan in January 2005. Huygens made measurements of Titan's thick atmosphere and took pictures of the moon's surface. The probe was built by the European Space Agency.
Huygens hitched a ride to Saturn on the back of NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Cassini "let go" of Huygens on December 24, 2004. Cassini will continue to orbit Saturn, studying the planet and its many moons and rings, for at least four years. Huygens landed on Titan on January 14, 2005.
A heat shield protected Huygens as it entered Titan's upper atmosphere. Next, a series of parachutes slowed the probe down and gently lowered it through the moon's dense atmosphere. Huygens took measurements of the atmosphere as it descended. Finally, the probe landed on the cold (-178º C, -288º F) surface of Titan. Huygens continued to send back data for a couple of hours after it touched down.
The Huygens probe had several instruments that measured Titan's atmosphere. The instruments measured things like the temperature, wind speed, pressure, and the types of gases in the atmosphere. The probe had a camera that took several hundred pictures on the way down. Huygens also had instruments that will help us learn about the icy ground that it landed on.
The probe was named after Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch astronomer. Huygens discovered Titan in 1655.


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Arcana Creations has always been more of a hobby than a dedicated pursuit. Over the past few years, there has never been a tremendous amount of output and, depending on the year, my efforts have shifted depending on what I saw as priorities at the time. And of course, life and my regular 9-5 mean that all my hobbies -- gaming, writing, reading, painting, and the like all take a back seat.
With 2016 finally coming to a close, one of the reasons I have been quiet this year, is some of the work I've been doing. Instead of writing reviews or chatting up on my blog, one of the things I've been doing is a large editing job on a novel. At present, this is over 75% completed and at the current rate, it should have gone to layout before the end of the month with proofs being done shortly thereafter. Specific details on this release will follow just after the holidays.
That said, there is one title currently being worked on with the tentative title of 'The Shaman of the Mire'. Troll Lord Games has just finished a short, three-day campaign to release two modules that take place in the Darkenfold in their setting of Aihrde for Castles & Crusades. It was a very successful campaign that will also produce a boxed set with plenty of goodies. Arcana Creations has pledged a digital copy of this new adventure to every backer ($10 and up) of the project. Once my commitment to that project is met, it will be made available for general sale as well as a physical print run. The delivery of TLG's kickstarter is slated for June 2017.
Arcana Creations plans for at least TWO other releases in 2017 but I don't want to get ahead of myself. In the meantime, there is A LOT of work to be done but I am enjoying it. However, one of the things that will need to be completely OVERHAULED before the end of the year is the Arcana Creations website...


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Estate Plus is Real Estate and Rental Portal Theme build on WordPress for full-feature real estate Website and Portal.
dslDXpress Plugin supports for FREE verison of dslDXpress Plugin is a plugin in allow your users to search for and browse available properties in your MLS, and lets the search engines INDEX properties from the MLS to your website.
Mega Menu – Our theme comes with super awesome mega menu plugin (Main Mega Menu) value $14.00 but its free for you!
Powerful Page Builder supports help you very easy to make any page layout by Drag and Drop many elements.
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Users can very easy to register an account and submit properties at FRONT – END of site no need to login to option panel area.
We build an amazing theme option panel for this theme, you can build your own real estate sites just a minutes!
Fully Responsive which will retain the looks to be viewed/visible properly and maintain the theme always looks nicely on different size of devices such as desktop, laptop, tablets and mobile phones at all time.
Unlimited Color – We build styling option allow you can change the layout with Unlimited color, you can changes it with the color for your website.
Newest Boostrap Framework – We build this theme with newst Bootstap Framework which is number on for web development for now.
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WPML Compatible / Localisation / Multilingual — Real Property Theme is loaded with WPML compatibility. You can create your site in multiple languages. .po and .mo files are included in the download pack.


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by Rafael Medoff
Nazi Germany's effort to recruit supporters in the Arab world is attracting new attention among scholars.
This week, on the 70th anniversary of a Palestinian Arab leader's sabotage of a plan to rescue Jewish children from Europe, Israeli scholar Edy Cohen spoke exclusively to JNS.org about his current research on the role of Nazi and Axis propaganda in the Middle East. Cohen, 41, is on the staff of the Israel State Archives.
During the Holocaust years, Haj Amin el-Husseini, better known as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, lived in Berlin, where he recorded pro-Nazi radio broadcasts that were beamed to the Arab world and recruited Bosnian Muslims to join an all-Muslim unit of the SS. Seventy years ago this week, on May 13, 1943, Husseini caught wind of a plan to permit 4,000 Jewish children, accompanied by 500 adults, to travel to Palestine in exchange for the release of 20,000 German prisoners of war. Both the Germans and the British had agreed to the exchange, but the Germans backed down when the Mufti objected.
The Mufti was the most prominent Arab figure to support the Nazis, but he was not alone. "My research tracks the effort by the Germans, Italians, and Japanese to spread their propaganda and influence in Palestine and various Arab countries," said Dr. Cohen, who was born and raised in Beirut, and immigrated to Israel in 1995. "They worked hard at it and, to a significant extent, they succeeded." Cohen has been combing through Arabic-language Nazi and Axis leaflets and radio broadcasts that were collected and analyzed by Haganah intelligence in the 1930s and 1940s.
Some of the leaflets Cohen has found feature stark headlines such as "Kill the Jews and the British!" Some were printed on the back of facsimile British pounds or American dollars, so that when they were dropped by German planes over Arab regions of Palestine, they looked like money and immediately attracted attention.
According to Dr. Cohen, some of the Arabic-language Nazi propaganda promised that those who attacked Jews would be rewarded by being given "the most beautiful of the Jewish girls" after Palestine's Jewish community was vanquished. "That sort of language makes one think of the promise that Muslim terrorist leaders today sometimes offer–that those who die while killing Jews will receive seventy virgins in heaven."
The text of the leaflets and broadcasts were composed by Nazi authors, and then translated into Arabic by members of the Mufti's entourage in Berlin. Some of the Mufti's men in Germany were more than writers: several parachuted into Palestine in 1944 with vials of poison that they intended to dump in the Tel Aviv water system. They were intercepted by the British police before they could carry out the attack.
Dr. Cohen found an internal memo from British police headquarters in Jerusalem in 1939, reporting that "the Arab population in Palestine are listening to the Berlin Broadcasts in Arabic most attentively, particularly in town and village coffee shops where large crowds gather for the purpose." The report stated that "the uneducated classes are undoubtedly being influenced" by the Nazi propaganda.
In 1945, the activists known as the Bergson Group successfully lobbied the government of Yugoslavia to indict the Mufti as a war criminal, because of atrocities committed against Allied soldiers and civilians by members of the Bosnian Muslim SS unit, known as "Handschar," that he helped create. The Yugoslavs never took steps to extradite him, however.
Husseini fled Berlin during the final days of the war, but was briefly detained by the French authorities and placed under house arrest in a Paris villa. In response to Arab pressure, the French permitted the Mufti to stage a faux escape, and he found haven in Cairo. Later he moved to Beirut, where he passed away in 1974.
Earlier this year, Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas stirred controversy when, in a PA television broadcast, he listed the Mufti's name among a number of "martyrs and heroes" who have died while fighting Jews or Israelis.


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IFREMER, R/V "Pourquoi Pas?", October 29 to November 17, 2014
Chief scientist: L. Géli (Ifremer, Brest, France)
FLOWS participants: P. Henry (Aix-Marseille University, France); M. N. Çağatay (Istanbul Technical University, Turkey); L. Gasperini (ISMAR, Bologna, Italy)
The MARSITECRUISE project will carry out instrument deployments and sampling on the offshore strand of North Anatolian Fault in the Sea of Marmara, a transform-type plate boundary that exposes the city of Istanbul to a high earthquake hazard. This research cruise is planned within MARSITE (www.marsite.eu), a EU-FP7 3-years Supersite project, coordinated by KOERI (Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute). The MARSITE project aims at harmonizing and combining seismological, geological, geophysical, geodetic and geochemical observations performed on land and at sea to improve seismic risk assessment and management. Scientific outcomes include better knowledge of: i) the post-seismic deformation of the 1999 Izmit earthquake and the signature of previous earthquakes, ii) the slip rates and interseismic loading rates on submarine and inland active fault segments iii) the transient signals and events, which includes microseismicity and earthquake precursors, related to strain within and around the fault zone. MARSITE work program at sea is the «monitoring of seismicity and fluid activity near the fault using existing cabled and autonomous multiparameter seafloor instrumentation ».
MARSITECRUISE of R/V Pourquoi pas ? is organized in 3 legs:
- Leg-1 (3 working days with ROV Victor) will deploy 10 geodetic transponders to characterize and quantify strain along the Istanbul-Silivri fault segment. Instruments will be recovered after 12 months of deployment with Geomar R/V Poseidon and then redeployed for 3 years. A temporary Ocean Bottom Seismometers (OBS) network will also be deployed around the geodetic monitoring site.
- Leg-2 (9 working days with ROV Victor) will perform geochemical sampling at fluid emission sites: long sediment cores for pore-fluid analyses; in situ gas sampling using Ifremer's ROV-Victor equipped with the PEGAZ system; water column sampling using a CTD-Rosette. Chemical and isotopic analysis (free and dissolved gases, gas hydrates, brines and pore waters, authigenic minerals) will further our understanding of fluid sources and migration pathways in the North Anatolian Fault Zone and of their long term temporal variations. Chemical sensor testing (methane sensors and Raman instrument) will complete the programme of Leg-2.
- Leg-3 (3 working days) will acquire long (up to 30 m length) sediment cores targeting horizons that will be dated to infer fault slip rates, and recover instruments deployed around fluid emissions sites located in the North Anatolian Fault Zone comprising piezometers, OBSs, and the Bubble OBservatory (BOB), a prototype for acoustic monitoring of bubble plumes.
The MARSITECRUISE Project involves scientists from the following institutions: Ifremer; CNRS (from 6 labs: IUEM-Brest, CEREGE-Aix-en-Provence, ISTERRE-Grenoble, LOCEAN-Paris, MNHN-Paris, CRPG-Nancy); INGV (Roma); CNR-Ismar (Bologna); Geomar (Kiel); ITU (Istanbul); KOERI (Istanbul); MTA (Ankara); DEU (University of Izmir); Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (USA).
(ISMAR CNR, R/V CNR URANIA – May 9, Messina- May 26, Naples):
FLOWS participant: L. Gasperini, Istituto di Scienze Marine (ISMAR)
The CALAQUAKE project (The CALabrian Arc subduction complex: active faults, historical earthQUAKEs and turbidites) is designed to carry out a multiscale-multidisciplinary study of deformation processes and relationships between tectonics and sedimentation in key areas of the Ionian Sea.
The Calabrian Arc (CA) is a narrow and arcuate subduction system resulting from Africa/Eurasia plate convergence and slab rollback in the Tyrrhenian region. Shortening is taken up by thrust faults in the accretionary wedge, while transtensive deformation accounts for margin segmentation along transfer tectonics systems, which are the shallow expression of deeply rooted processes.
Eastern Sicily and southern Calabria bear a historical record of destructive earthquakes often associated with tsunamis. Despite the detailed earthquake catalogue, knowledge of source parameters is still debated, and controversial interpretations exist especially for those earthquakes that may have been generated offshore, or along faults that extend into the submerged portion of the CA subduction system.
During the cruise, we will use a multi-scale and multidisciplinary approach involving the acquisition of high-resolution geophysical data and piston cores, which has the potential to reconstruct fault dynamics and relationships between shallow deformation, deeply rooted discontinuities and fluid flow within the accretionary wedge.
Download Final cruise report
RV Maria S. Merian, Las Palmas/Spain (22.3.) to Cadiz/Spain (21.4.2014)
Chief scientist: H. Villinger, University of Bremen, Germany
FLOWS participant: H. Villinger, University of Bremen, Germany
Expedition MSM37 (MICROB II) aimed to investigate North Pond. It is an isolated northeast-trending sediment pond, approximately 8 km x 15 km in aerial extent, located on the western flank of the MAR at 22° 45'N, 46° 05'W. During IODP expedition 336 in the fall of 2011 two CORKs (borehole observatories) were installed, penetrating the sedimentary cover and reaching into the basement, predominantly for sampling crustal fluids for microbial studies.
The goals of the MSM37 cruise was to recover instrumentation which was deployed during MICROB I in the spring of 2012, to pump fluids from different horizons of the borehole for microbiological investigations and to download pressure data.
We used the ROV Jason II to accomplish the technically challenging tasks. The picture on the left shows a GeoMICROBE Sled (Cowen et al. , 2012), an instrumented longterm seafloor system which pumps fluids from three different horizons at CORK 1383C, North Pond. The system is monitoring flow rate, temperature, O2, pH and redox. Options for in situ filtration and large fluid sampling exist. The in-situ sampling tools allow for sampling and filtration of large volumes of water. We recovered successfully two of the installed GeoMICROBE Sleds and two Mega-Osmosamplers and in addition we pumped fluids from the boreholes using a system installed on the ROV for in situ filtration. The data download of pressure data from three CORKs was successful and a first analysis showed that the data are of excellent quality.


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I have got a white, semi-transparent banner sliding down from the top (like in the chat) and containing the word "Undefined" several times today on SO proper, every time immediately after re-starting a system and opening the browser for the first time.
When I change pages, it disappears and doesn't come back again. I didn't manage to take a screenshot.
Chrome 4 (correction: 5) on Windows 7


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SYRIA - 18 March 2004
Reporters Without Borders condemns sacking and death threats against journalist
Reporters Without Borders has strongly protested against the reported dismissal of journalist Younes Khalaf, of the government daily
Al-Thawra (Révolution), over an article he wrote on pollution of drinking water in north-east Al-Hassaka province.
The sacking was reported by the Arabic-language online news website http://www.elpah.com that also said the journalist had received phoned death threats.
Reporters Without Borders said the threats and harassment showed the determination of the Syrian authorities to control news. The same process was at work in preventing the Syrian and international press from effectively covering clashes in the past few days between security forces, Arab tribes and Kurdish groups that have caused a number of casualties.
Obstacles to journalists' freedom of movement and their ability to report has meant that it has not been possible to confirm how many have died, said the international press freedom organisation. In addition the Syrian authorities have blocked several Kurdish news sites that were reporting on events in the country, in particular http://www.amude.com, based in Germany.
Khalaf apparently wrote a first article in Al-Thawra exposing corruption as one of the reasons for pollution of the region's water. The article, that began with the sentence, "I smell the odour of corruption", implicated the head of the water company in Al-Hassaka.
The rest of the investigation and an open letter to Prime Minister Mohammad Naji Otri, was apparently published in the privately-owned Arabic-language newspaper The Economy.
Séverine Cazes-Tschann
Middle East Desk
Reporters Without Borders


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The Carrboro Police Department held it's first Citizen Police Academy on Saturday, October 24th, 2015. This academy was designed and implemented by officers of the Carrboro Police Department's Patrol Division, Community Services Division and Criminal Investigations Division. The Citizen's Police Academy covered a variety of topics including: the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the operations of each division of the Police Department, a vehicle and tools demonstration, several scenario training exercises and a K-9 demonstration.
The goal of the Citizen Police Academy is to provide a chance for you to get an up close and personal look at the Carrboro Police Department. Learning how police officers conduct their jobs on a daily basis will help foster greater understanding, cooperation and communication in our diverse community.
Participants for the Citizen's Police Academy should meet the following conditions:
Any person who meets these conditions may apply.
A limited background check will be conducted on all submitted applications.
Only 12 applicants will be accepted.
For questions, comments, concerns or additional information, contact:
Sergeant C. Hobby, Community Services Division919-918-7402Email Sergeant Hobby
Or, select the "I Need To..." link on the left side of this page and submit a question under the "Ask an Officer" section of the website.


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Below the photos I will list the authors but their order will be different to the photo order. Your job is to, in a comment, list the photos numbered 1 to 12 with the correct names beside the numbers. Make sure you put your email address in the comment or tick the box that says you want to receive copies of the comments, otherwise I'll have no way of letting you know that you've won.
Your prize? - I'll put the names of the correct entries in a hat, and Sparky the cat will select the winning entry, to whom I promise to send a copy of Michael Robotham's mini-book BOMBPROOF. The closing date is Sunday next week (10th August)
So here is an Australian dozen who all write crime fiction!
(Sorry if a big gap appears on the page here- don't know what is causing it- can't see anything in the code. If you don't see one, you're lucky! If you do, scroll down to the important stuff please)
5. | 8. | |||
10. | 12. |
The authors are
Michael Robotham
Brian Kavanagh
Kerry Greenwood
Garry Disher
Adrian Hyland
Kate Morton
Katherine Howell
Marshall Browne
Leigh Redhead
Gabrielle Lord
Felicity Young
Shane Maloney


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Long Long back say 5 yrs ago I was gearing up in moving to Korea with my husband. In the process of getting a visa & all I stayed back in India for couple of months. On one of his trips my husband asked me to learn making " Majjiga Pulusu " stressing on that he likes it a lot. Oh I just can't believe how many times I flopped (in his view). At last I managed to satisfy his taste buds with my recipe that's a different story.
I have tasted various recipes of the same dish.My mom makes as I mentioned below with added potato cubes to it (which I ignored). But my MIL's version is quite interesting she adds steamed dal dumplings to it. I will try to post it here some time. I ignored veggies as I added lots of coconut to the dish. Coconut gives richness & flavor to this dish.
Few curry leaves
- Switch off heat & add seasoning to butter milk.
- You can use butter milk in place of curd.
- Adding onions, carrots & malbar spinach will bring more flavor to the dish.
- Don't boil butter milk for too long. Butter milk will break.


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How to Get Better Cell Phone Reception at Home
Updated: Jun. 09, 2023Improve cell phone service with a simple signal booster system you can install yourself
How to Get Better Cell Phone Signal
If you have lousy or nonexistent cell phone reception at home, don't hang it all up. For $400 to $800, you can install your own homemade cell phone signal booster that boosts cell phone signals for flawless service.
Here's how to get better cell phone reception. An antenna mounted outside the house receives signals from the phone company's cell tower and sends them to an amplifier to boost the signal. That signal is then broadcast throughout the house via an interior antenna. Special "low-loss" coaxial cables connect the components. The system works equally well for sending and receiving cell phone calls. In large houses or ones that have masonry partitions, you may need to add antennas elsewhere in the house for clear signals. But that's easily done by using specialized splitter connectors and additional cables.
Mounting the exterior antenna for a homemade cell phone signal booster is simple: It just clamps onto a typical antenna mast and the low-loss cable screws directly into it. You'll need to mount the amplifier near an outlet and out of the weather, so it's best to mount it inside the house in a spot where you can run cables to both antennas. The interior antenna is lightweight. After you connect the cable to it, simply screw it to the ceiling or wall. It's best to position it at least 7 ft. above the floor.
The tricky part is orienting the exterior antenna for the strongest signal. When ordering your parts for a homemade cell phone signal booster, order a "patch cord" that fits your brand and model of phone. Plug one end into your phone and the other directly into the antenna. Every newer phone has built-in electronics that'll identify signal strength as you turn the antenna and anchor it. The directions that come with the amplifier will help with this.
To find the exact parts you need, go online. If you're unsure what you need, contact either the manufacturer or one of the suppliers for help.
Homemade Cell Phone Signal Booster System
A cell phone signal boost system has four basic parts—the external antenna (1), the amplifier (2), the inside antenna (3) and the coaxial cables that connect them (4).
External Antenna and Amplifier
External Antenna (1): Sends and receives cell phone signals from a cell phone tower. Bi-directional amplifier (2): Amplifies signals coming from the external antenna (listening) and the signals coming from your cell phone (talking).
Interior Antenna and Cables
Internal antenna (3): Sends and receives signals to cell phones within the house. Low-loss coaxial cable (4): This special cable keeps interference from other electronics to a minimum and is crucial for transmitting signals to and from the components.


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Error: Media player has stopped appears on the TV screen or the TV freezes and turns on and off while playing files from a USB device.
If the error message Media player has stopped appears or the TV freezes and turns on and off during USB playback, try the steps below.
- Restart the TV.
- Connect the USB device to another USB port.
- Format the USB device.
- Make sure that the file format and file system aresupportedby the TV .
- Use a computer to check the file format and file system of the USB device.
- Try a different USB device.
- If the issue is still unresolved, reset the TV to factory settings .
- After completing this process, the Initial Setup screen displays.
- Be sure not to turn the TV off during this period (it takes about 30 seconds) or press any buttons.
In addition, using a free third party software to create a new MKV file by re-multiplexing or remixing the file you want to play on the TV through USB connection will resolve the issue.


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McKay becomes the second Silver School faculty member to be honored as a fellow of the AASWSW.
Mary McKay, the McSilver Professor of Poverty Studies and director of the McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research at the Silver School of Social Work at New York University, has been selected as a fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW). The 2012 fellows will be inducted in a ceremony on November 10 in Washington, DC.
The Academy was formed in 2009 to recognize outstanding social work scholars and practitioners. The organization's goals include encouraging outstanding research, scholarship, and practice; informing social policy by serving as a frontline source for information for the social work profession; and promoting the examination of social policy and application of research to test alternative policies, programs, and practices for their impact on society.
McKay, an internationally renowned specialist on families in poverty and positive youth development, joined the Silver School of Social Work in 2011. Prior to joining NYU Silver, she served as the head of the Division of Mental Health Services Research at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She has received substantial federal funding for research focused on meeting the mental health and health prevention needs of inner-city youth and families. Over the course of her career, she has developed a substantial body of research findings around engagement practices to improve involvement in family-based HIV prevention programs and mental health services by children, youth, and families in poverty-impacted urban areas.
McKay serves as the inaugural director of the McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research. The Institute conducts, promotes, and disseminates interdisciplinary applied research to address root causes of, effects of, and responses to poverty. It partners with New York-based agencies and communities to develop research projects and policy and advocacy recommendations that have short- and long-term social impact. Additionally, the Institute collaborates with multiple departments and schools across New York University.
"I am humbled by this tremendous honor and grateful to the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare for this recognition. I have been privileged to fulfill the roles of social work practitioner, supervisor, program director, and scholar over the last 25 years," said McKay. "At NYU's Silver School –o f Social Work, I am pleased to be part of the mission of preparing the next generation of social workers who will have evidence-based tools to provide a range of services to those in need, as well as to advocate for enhanced supports and policies that ensure that all are met with fairness and respect and have access to opportunities."
McKay is the second Silver School faculty member to be honored as a fellow of the AASWSW. Professor Deborah Padgett was inducted to the organization in 2011 and serves on its board of directors.


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"At any one
time I have five or six stories going around in my head", writer and director
Jeff Nichols says, while moulding some imaginary thing between his hands like a
potter at a wheel. "I'll pick one up, work on it for a while, then lay it down
and pick up another. The longer I work on them, the better they get. I first
had the idea for Mud when I was nineteen and have been thinking about it on and
off ever since."
Nichols looks like a lanky Marty McFly in jeans and trainers, a flannel shirt
and red sleeveless body-warmer, his thick sandy hair swept into a peak. At 34,
he appears at least a decade younger, relaxed and thoughtful, brimming with
enthusiasm for his new film and the work of those writers and directors that
have influenced him; "Malick, Spielberg, John Sayles, John Carpenter. Man, I'll
tell you, John Carpenter is a hero to me…"
grew up in the city of Little Rock, hometown of former President Bill Clinton,
deep in the American South. He was a child of the Arkansas suburbs with a
passion for comics, television and movies. "When we were kids, my father would
take us to the movies a couple of times a week. I was fascinated by the theater
of watching films, if you know what I mean; the ritual of it. The audience
settle into their seats, the lights go down and the curtain goes back. It has
always been tremendously exciting for me."
That thrill
of witnessing a story unfolding is apparent in Nichols' first feature, Shotgun
Stories. A sparse and literary story of feuding Arkansas farming stock, the
film featured a star-making turn from Nichols' best friend "and muse, I
suppose" Michael Shannon. His follow-up, Take Shelter starred Shannon again as
a man despairingly trying to protect his family from his terrifying visions of
the end of the world. Now he has swapped the dusty plains and anonymous suburbs
for the lush green banks of the Arkansas river for Mud, another family-focused
drama about two teenage boys Ellis and Neckbone (played by Tye Sheridan and
newcomer Jacob Lofland) who encounter a fugitive (Matthew McConaughey) hiding out on an island in the
Arkansas delta. Acting in secret, they help him evade the bounty hunters on his
trail while re-uniting him with his long-lost true love (Reese Witherspoon).
"You could
call it a coming of age story", Nichols says, "I'm comfortable with that
definition, but that wasn't the original intention. I sat down to write a
getaway film, a chase movie. But once I had this character who was a fourteen
year old boy, he connected to all these other things that were floating around
in my head at that time and I found I had stumbled into something else that was
far more interesting." What kind of things? "Well, my wife and I were expecting
our first child and I was thinking about fatherhood and father figures,
mentors, people who will help you along in life. I was thinking about
communities and how they form and function, because I was about to add one to
that number. Pretty heavy stuff".
I ask
Nichols how much of the film is autobiographical and he spreads his arms wide.
"The first connection, for me, is always a sense of place. I didn't grow up on
the river, I wasn't a river-rat like Ellis and Neckbone, but I had spent time
in their world and felt close to it. With each of my films, I try and find one
emotional connection to my own life, something that is physical and palpable.
Ellis standing in a parking lot getting his heart broken is exactly and
precisely me at the age of fourteen. I remember I had a physical reaction when
that girl let me down that day, nauseous and light headed. It played out almost
exactly as you see it in the film. Similarly, Shotgun Stories came from a deep
fear that one of my brothers would be killed or murdered somehow. And in Take
Shelter I was trying to recapture a momentary anxiety that I had that if my
marriage fell apart, the world would end too. Like a total deterioration. These
are feelings within me, not always rational or reasonable, but once I can
anchor the film to that, the rest of it can be about anything."
Once the
kernel of an idea comes to him, his approach is to flesh it out with characters
that he knows intimately. "Ellis and Neckbone are basically two sides of my
personality, the fantasist and the realist. To bring them into the story, I
just think about who they are, what they want and how they can achieve that. I
try to make that as realistic as possible and as close a match as I can to the
kind of experiences I have had myself. A lot of times I think filmmakers are
only concerned with plot. They'll say, "I am making a movie about this or
that", as if defining it in two sentences or less is somehow a positive. I
think that is a bad way to tell stories."
describes his method of screenwriting as "mostly thinking, then typing".
Relating how, one summer a couple of years back, he had two films on his mind,
he tells me how he sat down to write them both at the same time. One became
Take Shelter, the other became Mud. "They'd been knocking around for a while.
They had to come out. I made Take Shelter before Mud because I knew with this
film I was going to have to shoot in boats and on sets built on water. To do
that effectively takes time and costs money. Take Shelter has a lot more
special effects but oddly, in comparison, it was a simpler film to make.
Whatever we achieve in Mud we did it practically, with effort and sweat."
Before it
came to shooting, however, Nichols had another practical problem to address.
"When you write a script with two teenage boys as the central characters, you
just have to believe that the actors to play them are out there, somewhere, and
that you will find them. It's a leap of faith". I ask him if casting the film
was a drawn-out process, and he laughs. "Not at all. In a funny way, the
universe delivered them right to my doorstep, quite literally in the case of
Tye Sheridan". Sheridan, who had just turned fourteen when he was cast, came to
Mud through Nichol's producer Sarah Green, who had produced Terence Malick's
The Tree of Life and had spent more than a year on set with the young actor as
he played one of Brad Pitt's sons in 1950s Texas. "When I talked to Sarah, her
first reaction was to call for Tye. He was about 11 when he was working on Tree
of Life and it was an extraordinary experience for him. When we met he was just
the embodiment of the character I had written. He looked like him, talked like
him, behaved as I thought Ellis would. He's extraordinary".
As good as
Sheridan's performance is, it wouldn't be nearly as effective without the
presence of Neckbone; a tough, self-sufficient kid who rides a motorbike he
built himself from scrap and speaks with the voice of reason. "For Neckbone, we
put an ad in the paper. I knew Malick had done that to find Tye, so I figured
it was the way to go. What I didn't know was that Malick had received about
another ten thousand audition tapes". Casting Neckbone was big news in
Arkansas, Nichols says, "like someone winning the lottery. What happened was
that Jacob Lufland's mother saw the ad and thought our description sounded a lot
like her son. He had never acted before, never even thought about it. I knew
very early on that he was the right guy."
luck continued with casting continued with finding the grown-up actors from a
deep pool of fellow Southerners, but he only ever had one actor in mind for his
lead. "From day one I wrote the part of Mud for Matthew McConaughey to
play". The fact that Nichols
had never met McConaughey,
and had no idea if the actor knew of his existence, didn't matter. "He didn't
return my phone calls for a long time and it took some convincing to get him to
read the script but we got there". I tell Nichols that, for a long time, McConaughey
was better known for taking his shirt off than his acting abilities and the
director nods his head. "He takes his shirt off in my movie too, but only
because it was hellish hot. We
talked about all that though and he told me that he was working in a very
confined space, as an actor, in the studio romantic comedies he made for the
last couple of years. He couldn't be too happy or too sad, too bright or too
dark, too up or too down. Those characters exist between these two points which
are actually very close to one another. What's great about Mud, according to
Matthew, is that we can go wherever we want to".
Like all of
his films so far, Mud is set in his home state and the director feels a deep
responsibility to represent the place as it really is. It's a part of America
that isn't often depicted on screen, he says, where money is tight and
communities are even tighter. "There are very few movies about poor people and
the working class", Nichols explains, "and these are the people I have the most
respect for. When it comes to developing a character, the first thing I do is
give them a job. Our work defines so much about who we are. I'm always confused
when I watch a movie where everyone is an advertising executive living in a
penthouse and driving an extravagantly flashy car. Who are these people? How
can they afford to live to live like this? I just can't relate to them."
more to Nichols' determination to hew to reality than providing a backdrop to
his stories: he needs his characters to carry their own authenticity. "Take
Ellis' father, for instance (played by Ray McKinnon). He is a small-scale
commercial fisherman, and that tells us things we need to know about him: his
love and respect for the river that gives him his livelihood, his connection to
his community and his personal history and life experiences. I don't have to
spell all that background detail out for the audience; the character can do
that for me. Films are about behaviour. There are two elements to any
screenplay: one is action, the other is dialogue. Both of these things are
driven by behaviour. If I just got up and walked out of the room right now,
that would say something to you. I don't have to share my reasons, or say
anything at all, but you're left here to deal with the consequences of my
He stays
seated, thankfully, and continues. "So, I want my films to be rooted in character.
I'll have the big idea, like a fugitive hiding out on an island in a river, but
the rest of it comes from character. Who is the fugitive? Who are the people
who help him? Why are they helping him? What's going on around them? I'm not
just asking them to advance my plot and get me to a certain place. I want to
know who they are. Everything is borne out of those characters and if you get
them right, the rest falls into place. Ultimately, if you're building towards
that physical emotion I was talking about earlier, that kick in the stomach,
the audience will feel it more if you have been honest with them all the way
through. If you're not, it won't feel real. You might have this cool idea and
manoeuvre everything to make it happens, but really you're just putting words
in your characters mouths".
Nichols has
more stories he's been turning over, with the two most likely to become his
next films precipitating a move away from Arkansas. "I have this
science-fiction story I've been working on called Midnight Special. It's just a
little chase movie with speculative elements. And there's a road movie, a biker
film told from a woman's point of view set in 1960s California. But I won't
write anything down until I have the movie in my head, from start to finish".


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Lou Dobbs resignation: What next for controversial CNN anchor?
| Washington
Lou Dobbs, an anchor at CNN for 27 years, is picking up his populist marbles and going … elsewhere. For now, Mr. Dobbs has left his options open, but he made one point clear: He is not leaving the public arena.
In his surprise departure statement, delivered on his last cable-cast Wednesday evening, Dobbs asserted that "some leaders in media, politics, and business have been urging me to go beyond the role here at CNN" and remain involved in "the great issues of our day."
The suggestion was that Dobbs had resigned and was not fired, though his presence on the network had seemed increasingly out of step with its push for neutral reporting.
Dobbs is best known for stirring controversy on illegal immigration and, most recently, raising questions about President Obama's citizenship. On both CNN and especially his radio show, which is not affiliated with CNN, Dobbs fanned theories that Obama was born abroad, causing consternation within CNN. Network president Jon Klein reportedly suggested to Dobbs that he cool it on the sharp opinions.
A lightning rod for liberals
Liberal media watchdogs have long been on Dobbs's case. And Dobbs revealed on his radio show last month that a bullet had struck his home, while his wife stood outside, and that he had had "weeks and weeks of threatening phone calls."
CNN announced Thursday that Dobbs's nightly 7 p.m. EST time slot will be filled by John King, the anchor of CNN's Sunday show "State of the Union" and onetime AP reporter. The move demonstrates that CNN is pushing for an identity centered on straight news in a cable environment that, an hour later, is dominated by Fox's conservatives and MSNBC's liberals.
Dobbs's departure may not cost CNN much in the ratings game.
"Lou Dobbs's positions on major policy issues are more consistent with those expressed by the opinion-talkers on Fox than with those on CNN," says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "Since those who watched Dobbs because they share those views were unlikely to watch CNN's other programs for news, the effect on audience ratings for other CNN programs will probably be minimal."
Dobbs's next step
So what next for Dobbs, the last of the original CNN anchors?
Will he in fact move to Fox News? When former CNN-er Glenn Beck switched to Fox, his career took off. Dobbs met last month with Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, but Fox says there's been no discussion about hiring Dobbs.
Might Dobbs run for office, even president? One website, AllYourTV.com, is promoting that theory.
In his resignation statement, Dobbs listed what he considers "the major issues of our time": "the growth of our middle class, the creation of more jobs, healthcare, immigration policy, the environment, climate change, and our military involvement, of course, in Afghanistan and Iraq."
Each of those issues, he said, is "informed by our capacity to demonstrate strong resilience of our now weakened capitalist economy and demonstrate the political will to overcome the lack of true representation in Washington, D.C."
Dobbs lamented a public arena now defined by "partisanship and ideology" rather than "empirical thought and forthright analysis and discussion."
"I'll be working diligently to change that as best I can," he said.
In a written statement, CNN president Klein called Dobbs "a valued founding member of the CNN family." In an e-mail to staff, Klein called the parting "extremely amicable."
Dobbs started at CNN as an economics correspondent and host of the show "Moneyline." After conflicts with previous network president Rick Kaplan, Dobbs left CNN for a time to start the website Space.com, which focuses on astronauts. Dobbs returned to the network in 2001.
See also:
Lou Dobbs takes flak from many directions. He fires back too.
Follow us on Twitter.


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Journey wasn't just one of the best games of 2012, it also had easily one of the best soundtracks. Composer Austin Wintory assembled a remarkable collection of instruments and tonalities, the sort of holistic musical concoction we rarely get in games.
With this new video, you can listen to the entire Grammy-nominated soundtrack and follow along with annotations from the composer himself. It's a cool way to learn more about one of the best game soundtracks in recent memory, and also a good excuse to listen to that lovely Journey music one more time.